The best of palate cleanser TV to forget about all that’s going wrong in the world, if only for a moment

If you’re feeling a bit raw, stressed out or just exhausted this week the last thing you need is to be overstimulated.

We all have different go-to’s when we want to chill out or escape, and sometimes that can be the fast-talking hypnotic but cosy rhythms of the Gilmore Girls, the immersive, captive experience of the Saw franchise or watching reality TV contestants have hectic breakdowns on Love is Blind. You do you.

More than a few people have even said that after the past 24 hours (when, oh, nothing specific happened), they’re going to decompress by rewatching The Bear’s screaming Christmas episode or Succession’s manic election chapter.

But what this moment really calls for is not a warm hug of a show like Parks & Recreation, the belly laughs of What We Do in the Shadows or even the familiarity of a MASH rewatch.

What you need is a palate cleanser — the TV equivalent of the social media timeline cleanser like a cat video or a field of flowers, or that little dish of granita that comes out between the savoury courses and the desserts in a degustation journey.

It’s not meant to wow you or evoke any particular emotion. It should serve the purpose of a reset so you can pause, regroup and then move on, instead of cocooning yourself in a cave, forever afraid of the world outside.

Palate cleanser TV is not the same as a comfort watch. What it needs to be is unprovocative, instilling a state of neutrality, perhaps mild curiosity. It should be exceedingly low stakes.

If your fidelity is to scripted programming, you want to start with something quintessentially British.

Perhaps either the original or rebooted All Creatures Great and Small, set in 1930s England about a country vet in the Yorkshire Dales. It features an excess of tweed, sweater vests, crouching in barns with an arm up a cow’s rear-end and repressed English people struggling to say what they mean.

There’s also a Stephen Fry show from 2007 called Kingdom, in which he is a solicitor in a Norfolk town called Market Shipborough. There is an overarching story about a missing brother, but most of the stories involve eccentric townsfolk and their small problems.

For a true palate cleanser though, scripted TV shows require a little more investment than you ideally have to give, so you have to turn to the doco/reality world — but not a reality show where people are trying to win things (no, no, that’s too heightened and populated with far too many unpleasant personalities, fast editing and chaotic music).

There is a docuseries on Apple TV called Home which explores the relationship between humans and the architecture we live in. There’s an episode about an eco-house in the Maine woods that is very soothing.

The next stage allows for a tad more pep, and this is when series such as Escape to the Country and Escape to the Chateau come in.

The former is a very, very long-running British series where rotating hosts take city dwellers to property hunt in the countryside, swapping out their London flats for a Cotswold stone cottage or a cosy converted barn.

Every episode follows the same format, which also allows for some quaint activities such as punting or making jam. The only stressors in this environment are English people’s predilection for red in their interior design — watch a few episodes and you will come across a home with matching red damask cushions, curtains and bedspreads. Shudder.

The earlier seasons of Escape to the Chateau are very wholesome TV, following a British couple trying to renovate a derelict castle in France, and turning it into a sustainable business.

Other shows that fit the bill include food porn such as Salt Fat Acid Heat, Chef’s Table (it just dropped a noodles-centric special), Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner and Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy or anything with Rick Stein.

At this point, you’re ready to emerge and take on a little more, allow yourself to be sparked by an idea or two. Here is when travel shows will serve you well, opening your world bit by bit.

Something such as the World’s Most Scenic Railway Journeys, with each episode weaving through some spectacular landscapes such as the Canadian Rockies or Norway’s Gudbrandsdal Valley, works. It’s tease but doesn’t overwhelm with jumpy music or a loud personality.

If you are ready to be guided by a person, let it be Richard Ayoade in Travel Man or Eugene Levy in The Reluctant Traveller.

There are also a bunch of celebrity-narrated nature documentaries such as Penguins, voiced by Ed Helms, Meerkat Manor with Bill Nighy or the Galapagos series with Tilda Swinton.

If your synapses are reawakening, the Naked Science channel on YouTube has hours of James May stripping down items such as an electric guitar and then rebuilding it. It’s super meditative, as long as you remember to turn off autoplay lest you be served something ungodly by the algorithm at the end.

Finally, there is always Grand Designs, which is good for any mood but especially when you need a palate cleanser. Kevin McCloud will always steer you the right way.